2005-09-02

Planning, Response Are Faulted

Tens of thousands of people remain stranded on the streets of New Orleans in desperate conditions because officials failed to plan for a serious levee breach and the federal response to Hurricane Katrina was slow, according to disaster experts and Louisiana government officials.

Though experts had long predicted that the city -- which sits mostly below sea level and is surrounded by water -- would face unprecedented devastation after an immense hurricane, they said problems were worsened by a late evacuation order and insufficient emergency shelter for as many as 100,000 people.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hurray for the mayor of NO. It is past time to blast people that stay on their duffs awaiting photo opts and pats on the back while thousands of Americans die. I believe we will eventually find that more people died due to inaction than the storm itself. THAT is unforgivable in this country.

Many of us reached screaming stage by Tuesday and are amazed that no major action really too place till today. They said it takes 1-2 days to mobilize. Fine, you also said that you declared the area a disaster area on Saturday, that mean troops should have pulled in by Monday at the latest. Even given that you may have not mobilized early, then we should have been looking at Wed at the latest.

Plus, a helicopter group on TX could have delivered pallets of food and water to dry bridges and intersections since Tuesday. So far, they have not thought of that one.

Then they knew of fire dangers and no water on Monday, yet have not had the western helicopter forest fire drop equipment called to stand by to the day, while we are getting fires now and they say they do not know what to do.

They say they didn't know what to do about power in the Convention Center and Superdome, but a few commercial generators, with a day each of a couple electricians to rewire the line to the interiors of the buildings, a little fuel and they could have powered these critical buildings.

The military uses portable water tanks all the time. Why couldn't they bring these in?

They say the roads were impassible. Who needs roads? All this and more is often delivered in military and civilian operations.

I could go on and on. Why no one thought of these kind of suggestions and ignored them when people offered them is beyond me.